Flash Fiction Friday – Hide and Seek

HIDE AND SEEK

Oh God, please don’t let them find the body. It had seemed such a good idea at the time. Not the killing, of course. Killing is always a bad idea. Not that I had meant to kill him. He was bothering me and I only wanted to push him away. It wasn’t my fault that he stumbled, fell and hit his head on the curb. He shouldn’t have been drunk. Actually, he shouldn’t have attacked me. I don’t really care if someone wants to get drunk. It’s a free country: you can do to your liver whatever the hell you want to. But leave me out of it. Don’t come at me as if I owe you anything just because I am a woman. I tend to get very angry then.

That was what happened. It had been self-defense. I wanted him to leave me alone, and as a result I killed him. Well, he would really leave me alone now, wouldn’t he?

I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be flippant about it. But I am so frustrated. The old dilapidated boat had seemed such a good place to hide a body. It had been really difficult too. Do you know how much a dead body weighs? Well, it’s a lot more than a live one, I can tell you that. They don’t call it ‘dead weight’ for nothing. I am a strong woman, but even so, I struggled all night to get him into that stupid boat. That boat had been floating off the coast ever since I can remember. Everyone avoids it, as there are rumours it is haunted. So what better thing to do than haul the body into my little row boat, row over to the old boat and leave the body there. After a while, the body disintegrates with the old boat and had I been lucky, the boat and body would eventually just disappear into the sea. Gary was a bit of a loner who came and went at will, so no one would have questioned his extended absence for months.

But I am not lucky. I never am, so how I thought I could get away with this baffles me. They are going to clear away the boat. It’s an eye sore, they say. I am not sure how they are going to get rid of it, but if they haul it to shore they will have a little surprise waiting for them. In the form of a dead body.

It’s not that they can pin it on me, per se. I mean, I don’t generally have anything to do with Gary. But there will be an investigation and eventually they will come to me. Something will come to light. I haven’t really been careful with fingerprints and DNA. I didn’t think I had to. They will find my fingerprints and that’ll be it for me. All because he attacked me.

I can claim self-defense, which is reasonable enough, but you don’t know this town. Gary might have been a bit of a loner, but he was a rich, white man – and really, do I need to say more? The only thing I have going for me is that I am white. Which sadly won’t count for much in this scenario.

I think the best thing to do is to quietly disappear. Which is too bad, I really liked this town. But it’s better to go now before they discover the body. Maybe my luck will turn and they will forget about the quiet woman working at the only McDonalds in town. My colleagues won’t miss me and I doubt even my landlady would care. Being boring has its uses, I guess.

Onward and upwards, I guess. I just have to make sure I am more careful next time. I am getting too old for all this moving around.